A DUP retreat of sorts

Not a serious one, of course (not yet, anyway).

But today the DUP unveiled is new-look website, and in one corner there is a map of DUP advice centres:


Observant readers of this blog or the old DUP website will remember that for a long time the map of DUP advice centres included several in the south - one in County Leitrim and one in Donegal:



So it seems that the DUP has retreated and regrouped. After the Westminster election this year maybe they'll pull back a bit more. Over time, and with luck, those blue map pins will hopefully disappear from the map entirely.

The sincerest form of flattery - or desperation?

The SDLP have followed the UUP's lead and have found a TV celebrity candidate to stand for them in Fermanagh and South Tyrone (FST). In fact, as the BBC reports it, "Former UTV Reporter Fearghal McKinney is expected to announce later that he wants to be the next MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone. The journalist is expected to declare that he wants to run for the SDLP in the forthcoming General Election." That gives the impression that it is McKinney himself, rather than the SDLP as a party, who will decide who stands. So far nothing has been heard from the SDLP's long-standing (but unsuccessful) Westminster candidate Tommy Gallagher.

McKinney thus follows in the footsteps of his erstwhile UTV colleague, Mike Nesbitt, who will stand for the UUP/UCUNF in Strangford.

The upcoming Westminster election is increasingly becoming a personality contest rather than a grass-roots political battle. More and more of the candidates put up by several of the parties are first-timers, without any political history. They are being proposed simply for their name-recognition rather than their political experience or wide network of supporters. In fact, outside of his own circles it is probably unknown that McKinney was even a member of the SDLP.

No doubt some of the people proposed for Westminster candidacies are worthy people in their own rights, and most probably feel that they could do the job if elected. But many of them simply do not know what the job is – they have never even stood in a district council or Assembly election, let alone actually been elected and had to deal with the complicated and demanding work of being a public representative.

One of the reasons why politicians work their way up from the bottom, often via voluntary or community activities, through election to a district council and/or the Assembly, is that this allows them to make numerous contacts, and allows the voters a chance to get to know, trust and depend on them. They gather around them a group of supporters who help them to get elected, and who, once elected, feed them information on what is happening in their area – who has needs, who has died, which organisation to visit, pitfalls to avoid, and so on. Celebrity candidates, who are parachuted in for the election, largely lack the local touch, and entirely lack any knowledge of the job that they are applying for. As such, they represent an attempt by their parties to fool the electors. The use of celebrity candidates is a cynical ploy by the parties – and represents an acknowledgement that they do not, in fact, have the kind of organisation on the ground that a successful MP would need. As such it represents a dishonesty vis-à-vis the voters – the candidate, if elected, would not be able (or interested) in doing anything for his or her constituents, but would simply become a figurehead for the party.

Celebrity candidates are not new, of course – Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger are two well-known examples, and the US is full of others. But in Northern Ireland they are new. Whether they represent simply a last-ditch attempt by parties on their way out to rescue themselves by using the 'brand recognition' of TV personalities, or whether it is a trend that is here to stay, is impossible to tell. How well such 'blow-ins' will be treated by the politically ambitious in their own parties – who see the higher levels of their potential political careers being stolen by celebrities who have effortlessly leap-frogged the years of hard work and effort that the ascent of the greasy pole usually required. Such by-passed local activists will probably not pull their weight for a blow-in, unless remarkably loyal to the party – more loyal, in fact, than they are to their own political careers. Perhaps the parties won't mind losing some of their most loyal supporters, if they feel that the brand-recognition of their celebrities will win them as many, or more, votes. But this ploy represents at the very least a gamble by the SDLP and the UUP. And gambling is usually something that you only do if you are getting desperate.

The end of a generation

A political generation, that is.

The Assembly has just voted by 'parallel consent' (as they call it) for the transfer of Policing and Justice.

105 MLAs voted, of whom 88 voted for the transfer, including all 44 nationalists, 35 unionists and 9 'others'. 17 voted against the transfer – presumably all of them UUP MLAs.

So, with that, Nigel Dodds 'political generation' comes to an end, and, almost certainly, so does Jim Allister's hopes for the future – there was no rebellion by DUP dissidents, and despite the UUP not providing 'cover', the DUP voted for the transfer.

The vote also represents possibly the first time that the DUP has voted with nationalism, and against its unionist siblings in the UUP. A strange day indeed.

Brown's in no hurry

As of today there are only nine possible dates left for the Westminster election – the nine Thursdays from 8 April to 3 June inclusive.

Most political commentators have pencilled in May 6 as the most likely date for the election (and thus they expect Brown to announce the dissolution of the current parliament on Monday 12 April).

However, the trend in the polls is all in Brown's favour, and his rebound appears to be gravity-defying:

The graph above is based on polls carried out by YouGov, ICM, Populus, Ipsos Mori and Comres, so suffers less from the built-in bias that some pollsters might suffer from.

Look at the right-hand side of the graph – Labour's red is rising inexorably, and the Tories blue is starting to dip a little. As the two lines come closer, a hung parliament gets more likely – or even, if things continue in this way, a Labour victory. This may not be a Labour majority, but if they got more seats that the Tories they would certainly be better placed to form the next British government. However, Labour can actually get more seats than the Tories with fewer actual votes than them, due to the concentration of Tory voters in a number of constituencies.

Gordon Brown, looking at the poll results, must be feeling that he could afford to put off the Westminster election until the last possible moment, in the hope that things keep moving in his favour. Of course he may turn out to be wrong, but on the evidence of the opinion polls there is, at present, no reason for him to rush the election.

Did the SDLP take Campbell's bait?

The BBC have reported that the DUP's Gregory Campbell has stated that Derry's "name change issue is 'dead'"

Apparently Derry City Council failed to reach agreement at a meeting on Monday, when proposals put forward by Sinn Fein and the SDLP were both rejected. It can only be assumed – given that the two parties together have 24 of the 30 Council members – that each party voted against the other party's proposal.

Given that both parties are in agreement that the only valid name for Derry is Derry, and the vast majority of its citizens agree, the issue will not go away, despite Gregory Campbell's attempts to gloat.

However, as this blog pointed out a few days ago, Campbell had dangled the carrot of unionist tactical votes in front of the SDLP in the lead-up to this discussion. Could it be that the SDLP engineered the failure of both their own and Sinn Féin's proposals in order to be able to avail of these precious unionist votes?

Make-or-break for the TUV

Tomorrow there will be a cross-community vote in the Northern Ireland Assembly on whether to accept the transfer of policing and justice powers from Westminster to Stormont. Martin McGuinness is 'confident' the DUP and Sinn Fein will carry the vote, but the UUP are adamant that they might not support the transfer – despite the support of 75% of the people in Northern Ireland, pressure from Hilary Clinton, and the apparent support for the transfer from the UUP's own partners, the English Tories!

The vote in the Assembly will be taken on a cross-community basis. This means that, in order for it to be passed, it must have the support of either;

(a) a majority of the members voting, a majority of the designated Nationalists voting and a majority of the designated Unionists voting; or,
(b) 60 per cent of the members voting, 40 per cent of the designated Nationalists voting and 40 per cent of the designated Unionists voting.

Given that Sinn Féin support is guaranteed, and they hold a majority of the nationalist seats (61%, excluding Gerry McHugh who has left the party), the issue is whether the unionist side can make up the numbers.

In order to pass the vote under (a), if the UUP insist on voting against the transfer, the DUP will need to ensure that 27 of their 36 members vote for the proposal. Excluding the Speaker, the DUP's William Hay (who cannot vote), and including the PUP's Dawn Purvis, means the DUP will need to get at least 26 of their MLAs on board.

Under (b) the task may be a little easier, if the support of the SDLP can be counted on. The SDLP and Sinn Féin together have 43 seats, and 60% of the 108 MLAs is 65. If Dawn Purvis can be counted on, the DUP will have to ensure 21 votes, which would make 40% of the 'unionists voting', and, allied to the nationalists, over 60% of the total members voting.

Ironically, at the time of the Hillsborough Agreement, 21 votes was just about all the Peter Robinson could count on! In its (confidential) discussions before the Hillsborough Agreement, "up to 14 DUP members – including MPs such as Campbell and Dodds – expressed disquiet over the vagueness of that part of the package concerning loyalist concerns over the marching season.". According to Gerry Adams "Peter Robinson brought the outcome of those discussions to his Assembly group and recommended that they accept what he agreed with us. It was put to a vote which he won by 22 to 14."

So tomorrow offers the DUP dissidents – and by extension the TUV – an enormous opportunity. If the dissidents stand together they can combine with the UUP – if they actually do oppose the transfer – and defeat it. This would provide a huge boost to the rejectionist unionist position, and would probably bring Peter Robinson down. It would be a propaganda victory of mythical proportions for Jim Allister, who may then be well placed to don the mantle of true leader of 'traditional unionism'.

However, the UUP may soon put paid to any fantasies that Allister may have by deciding to support the transfer, thus rendering any DUP dissent pointless and counter-productive. There will be many people in the DUP who will be watching the outcome of today's UUP executive discussions very closely. A climb-down by the UUP – already quite likely in the light of yesterday's opinion poll – would ruin Allister's hopes of coalescing a blocking minority of MLAs around his 'charismatic' leadership, and in one fell swoop creating a TUV presence in the Assembly. It is not an exaggeration to say that tomorrow's vote could either raise the TUV to a higher level, or consign it to continued irrelevance.

Delicate issues in Derry

In 2005 Mark Durkan retained the Foyle Westminster seat with 46.3% of the votes, beating Sinn Féin's Mitchel McLaughlin who got 33.2%. On the face of it, the SDLP seems to be fairly safe in this constituency – though less so than in John Hume's day, when he got over 50% of the vote.

But the total nationalist vote in Foyle – 79.5% - was clearly higher than normal in 2005, and implied that a number of unionists may have voted strategically for Durkan. In the 2007 Assembly election the nationalist vote returned to a more 'normal' 72.2%. The SDLP still out-polled Sinn Féin, but by 2,533 votes rather than the 5,957 in 2005.

The graph below shows the outcomes of the last three Westminster elections in the constituency:

It is clear that the 'borrowed' unionist votes (even the DUP's Gregory Campbell reckons that there were around 1,500 of these) merely disguised a steep fall in the SDLP core cote. Sinn Féin's vote increased quite significantly – and it is unlikely that this was because of loaned unionist votes.

Loans come with various conditions, though – interest must be paid. And now Gregory Campbell has spotted a chance to get his interest payment from the SDLP.

Campbell knows that the SDLP are worried about losing their flagship seat – their equivalent of the DUP's North Antrim. Events since 2007 have not been positive for the SDLP – Durkan is no longer its leader, and the recent Ritchie-McDonnell leadership battle may have left some members less than fully committed to its new leadership. Fianna Fáil has established itself in the constituency, though they will not stand for election this year. But their supporters may not warm to Ritchie's colder attitude towards Fianna Fáil.

And there is also the small issue of 2,045 voters who voted for Eamonn McCann in 2007 – if he does not stand this year those voters may switch to the next most radical party – Sinn Féin – and close up almost the entire 2,533 vote gap that the SDLP had in 2007.

Gregory Campbell's interest payment relates to the controversial issue of the name of the city. The Special Meeting of Derry City Council to consider the 'name change' was adjourned, and Campbell is worried that it may be put back until after the Westminster election, thus allowing the SDLP to benefit from some unionist strategic voting. He wants the special meeting to happen before the election, so that he can dangle the carrot of the unionist votes that Durkan probably needs in front of the SDLP. Essentially he is saying to the SDLP – drop the 'name change' and you'll get the votes you need.

Of course the problem for Campbell is that he may end up with nothing – if the Council does put back the issue until after the election, then any unionist loans that Durkan gets will have been banked – but if he encourages unionists not to vote for Durkan he faces the prospect of Mitchel McLaughlin MP. He must be hoping that the SDLP's nerve will break.